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Facebook And Instagram Went Down Today

 

Facebook and Instagram went down for about an hour this morning.....Today is Super Tuesday....was this a co-incidence or what?  I'm no conspiracy theorist...but...it does make you wonder!

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Let's Get This Straight

 IN MEMORIUM- The Five Victims of the Night club shooting in Colorado Springs.

Pro Life Them

 

See How This Works?

 

From Russia with ?

 A shocking report came out today that says the Russians targeted African-Americans during the 2016 election....I'm not surprised and judging by what I saw on my own Facebook and Twitter fields..
I believe the report..

The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of posts on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its Facebook operations, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The report adds new details to the portrait that has emerged over the last two years of the energy and imagination of the Russian effort to sway American opinion and divide the country, which the authors said continues to this day.

“Active and ongoing interference operations remain on several platforms,” says the report, produced by New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company based in Austin, Texas, along with researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research LLC. One continuing Russian campaign, for instance, seeks to influence opinion on Syria by promoting Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president and a Russian ally in the brutal conflict there.

The New Knowledge report, which was obtained by The New York Times in advance of its scheduled release on Monday, is one of two commissioned by the Senate committee on a bipartisan basis. They are based largely on data about the Russian operations provided to the Senate by Facebook, Twitter and the other companies whose platforms were used.
The second report was written by the Computational Propaganda Project at Oxford University along with Graphika, a company that specializes in analyzing social media. The Washington Post first reported on the Oxford report on Sunday.

The Russian influence campaign in 2016 was run by a St. Petersburg company called the Internet Research Agency,owned by a businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who is a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. Mr. Prigozhin and a dozen of the company’s employees were indicted last February as part of the investigation of Russian interference by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.

Both reports stress that the Internet Research Agency created social media accounts under fake names on virtually every available platform. A major goal was to support Donald Trump, first against his Republican rivals in the presidential race, then in the general election, and as president since his inauguration.

Creating accounts designed to pass as belonging to Americans, the Internet Research Agency spread its messages not only via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which have drawn the most attention, but also on YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Vine and Google+, among other platforms.

 Its attack on the United States used almost exclusively high-tech tools created by American companies.

The New Knowledge researchers discovered many examples of the Russian operators building an audience with one theme and then shifting to another, often more provocative, set of messages. For instance, an Instagram account called @army_of_jesus_ first posted in January 2015 images from The Muppet Show, then shifted to The Simpsons and by early 2016 became Jesus-focused. Multiple memes associated Jesus with Mr. Trump’s campaign and Satan with Mrs. Clinton’s.

The Russian campaign was the subject of Senate hearings last year and has been widely scrutinized by academic experts. The new reports largely confirm earlier findings: that the campaign was designed to attack Hillary Clinton, boost Mr. Trump and exacerbate existing divisions in American society.

But the New Knowledge report gives particular attention to the Russians’ focus on African-Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines collections of their memes and messages.
“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says.

Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.

The report says that while “other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of on or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively with dozens.” In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X.

The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”

They clearly knew the lingo!

The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African Americans. But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.

Renee DiResta, one of the report’s authors and director of research at New Knowledge, said the Internet Research Agency “leveraged pre-existing, legitimate grievances wherever they could.” As the election effort geared up, the Black Lives Matter movement was at the center of national attention in the United States, so the Russian operation took advantage of it, she said — and added “Blue Lives Matter” material when a pro-police pushback emerged.

“Very real racial tensions and feelings of alienation exist in America, and have for decades,” Ms. DiResta said. “The I.R.A. didn’t create them. It exploits them.”
Of 81 Facebook pages created by the Internet Research Agency in the Senate’s data, 30 targeted African-American audiences, amassing 1.2 million followers, the report finds. By comparison, 25 pages targeted the political right and drew 1.4 million followers. Just seven pages focused on the political left, drawing 689,045 followers.

While the right-wing pages promoted Mr. Trump’s candidacy, the left-wing pages scorned Mrs. Clinton while promoting Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate. The voter suppression effort was focused particularly on Sanders supporters and African-Americans, urging them to shun Mrs. Clinton in the general election and either vote for Ms. Stein or stay home.

Whether such efforts had a significant effect is difficult to judge. Black voter turnout declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, but it is impossible to determine whether that was the result of the Russian campaign.

The New Knowledge report argues that the Internet Research Agency’s presence on Instagram has been underestimated and may have been as effective or more effective than its Facebook effort. The report says there were 187 million engagements on Instagram — users “liking” or sharing the content created in Russia — compared 76.5 million engagements on Facebook.


In 2017, as the American news media focused on the Russian operations on Facebook and Twitter, the Russian effort shifted strongly to Instagram, the report says.

The New Knowledge report criticizes social media companies for misleading the public.
“Regrettably, it appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress,” the report says, noting what it calls one false claim that specific population groups were not targeted by the influence operation and another that the campaign did not seek to discourage voting.

“It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion,” the report says.

The report suggests a grudging respect for the scale and creativity of Russian influence operations. But the Russians were not eager to take credit for their own efforts.

After the election, the report says, the Internet Research Agency put up some 70 posts on Facebook and Instagram that mocked the claims that Russia had interfered in the election.
“You’ve lost and don’t know what to do?” said one such post. “Just blame it on Russian hackers.”

The sad thing is THIS PRESIDENT who most certainly benefited from all of this refuses to acknowledge any of this really happened...He continues to say "No Collusion." but I'm beginning to believe he was not some helpless dupe..That he knew full well what the Russians were doing on his behalf and encouraged it...

We may never know the entire truth....but one thing is certain...The biggest long shot in American political history pulled off an unlikely upset in November 2016 and we are all still suffering from it.

So This Is Putting America First,Right?

Yeah, Just Imagine

Or have a barbecue in the park for that matter....

Karma Is American

Stevie Steve Is Dead!

Stevie Steve (Steve Stephens) dubbed ''The Facebook Killer"is dead!  He apparently killed himself as of this writing while being pursued by Pennsylvania State Police in Erie county, PA. this afternoon!

The man who randomly killed a Cleveland retiree and posted video of the crime on Facebook shot himself to death in his car yesterday during a police chase in Pennsylvania, ending a multistate manhunt less than 48 hours after it began.

Acting on a citizen tip, Pennsylvania State Police spotted Steve Stephens, 37, leaving a McDonald's in Erie and went after him, bumping his car to try to get it to stop, authorities said. He shot himself in the head as the car spun out of control, police said.

"This started with one tragedy and ended with another person taking their own life," said Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams. "We would have liked to have brought Steve in peacefully and really talked to him about why this happened."

Steve Stephens, a job counselor who worked with teenagers and young people, was wanted on murder charges in the shooting of Robert Godwin Sr., a 74-year-old former foundry worker and father of 10 who was picking up aluminum cans on Sunday when he was gunned down.

The chilling video was on Facebook for three hours before it was taken down, drawing criticism of the social network and renewing questions about how responsibly it polices objectionable material.

At a Silicon Valley conference Tuesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg briefly addressed the Cleveland case, saying Facebook has "a lot of work to do" and "we will keep doing all we can to prevent tragedies like this."

I doubt that they could have prevented this.. Besides...he didn't actually stream it live...He filmed it on his phone and then posted it to his Facebook page..

Police would not speculate on what was behind the killing, but in the video and other footage he posted, Stephens talked about losing everything he had to gambling and having trouble with his girlfriend. He said he "just snapped."

One of Godwin's daughters, Debbie Godwin, said she wished Stephens had been captured alive.

 "I'm not happy he's dead at all, not at all. If you did it, you have to face your crime," she said.

The break in the case came when police received a tip that Stephens' car was in the McDonald's parking lot in Erie, in the northwestern corner of the state, about 100 miles east of Cleveland, authorities said. The chase lasted 2 miles before Stephens took his own life, police said.
Law enforcement officials had said on Monday that Stephens' cellphone was last tracked Sunday afternoon near Erie.

The police chief said Tuesday that it wasn't clear whether Stephens had any help while he was on the run or where he had been and that investigators will try to retrace he steps.

Facebook said it removed the video of the shooting 23 minutes after learning of it. The company has since announced it is launching a review for reporting harmful content.

"This is something that should not have been shared around the world. Period," Cleveland's police chief said.

In the video, Stephens told Godwin the name of his girlfriend and said, "She's the reason that this is about to happen to you." Godwin did not seem to recognize the name.

Investigators said that Godwin was the only victim so far linked to Stephens, despite his claim on Facebook that he killed over a dozen people.

Detectives spoke with the suspect on Sunday by cellphone and tried to persuade him to surrender, police said. Within a day, authorities expanded the search nationwide and offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

And so for Stevie Steve (His Facebook account name) it's over! He's dead!  But his infamous video lives on..It's been shared by millions and watched over and over again...What does that say about us?

Social Media.. It began with Blogging....and then elevated to Facebook, Twitter,Instagram, Youtube,Snapchat and several other platforms...We live in an age now when everybody can be a star in their own mind...Forget 15 minutes of fame....If you can gather enough "followers" you can have your own on line Television show...Stevie Steve is just a horrible by product of this narcissistic age we now live in...

If he had just rolled up on that man and shot him...No one would have known or cared outside of the families...but he did it live on Facebook and made himself and that man in death media celebrities....

Crazy world we live in, isn't it?

I imagine Stevie Steve had to be in a lot of pain to do what he did...Now in death...I hope his troubled soul is at peace!

Murder Streamed Live

On Easter Sunday in Cleveland...A man known as "Stevie Steve" , real name Steve Stephens committed a horrifying act....He murdered a man, live on Facebook...

Police said Steve Stephens killed Robert Godwin Sr., a 74-year-old former foundry worker, on Sunday.

Investigators said that Mr Godwin was the only victim so far linked to Stephens, despite the suspect's claim in a separate video on Facebook that he's killed over a dozen people.

Officers searched dozens of places around the city and spoke with the suspect by cellphone, police said.

Police Chief Calvin Williams warned residents to be careful as the go about their day.

Authorities also warned people in Pennsylvania, New York, Indiana and Michigan to be alert for Stephens, who was wanted on a charge of aggravated murder.

"We're going to make this individual's world very, very small," said U.S. Marshal Pete Elliott.
Mr. Godwin apparently was shot while out picking up cans in a plastic shopping bag, his daughter said.

"Not because he needed the money, it was just something he did," said 52-year-old Debbie Godwin. "That's all he was doing. He wasn't harming anyone."

She said her father, who had 10 children, was a gentle man with nothing mean about him. "We called him the junk man," she said. "He'd pick up things off the street and fix them. He picked up bikes and he fixed them."


The motive for the shooting wasn't entirely clear from the shaky video, in which Steve Stephens told Godwin a woman's name and said, "She's the reason that this is about to happen to you." Godwin did not seem to recognize the woman's name.

The suspect then pointed a gun at Godwin, who shielded his face with the plastic bag.

The woman Stephens mentioned, Joy Lane, said in a text to CBS that "We had been in a relationship for several years. I am sorry that all of this has happened."

She also said Stephens was "a nice guy" who was generous to everyone and was "kind and loving" to her and her children.

Facebook said the video was posted after the killing but wasn't broadcast on Facebook Live as police initially indicated.

The suspect did go live on the social media site at another point Sunday.
The video of the killing was on Facebook for about three hours before it was taken down. Stephens' Facebook page also was eventually removed.

"This is a horrific crime and we do not allow this kind of content on Facebook," the company said.  

"We work hard to keep a safe environment on Facebook, and are in touch with law enforcement in emergencies when there are direct threats to physical safety."

In the separate video, Stephens said: "I killed 13, so I'm working on 14 as we speak."

Police said they have not verified any other shootings or deaths.

Steve " Stevie Steve Stephens worked at Beech Brook, a behavioral health agency headquartered in Pepper Pike, near Cleveland.

 He helped young people develop job skills and find employment, said Beech Brook spokeswoman Nancy Kortemeyer.

An extensive background check before he was hired turned up nothing worrisome, she said.

"We just hope Mr. Stephens is apprehended as quickly as possible so that no one else is injured," she said.

In one of the videos, Stephens could be seen holding up his employee identification and said: "I'm killing with my Beech Brook badge on, too."


If you know me personally , you know  that I'm a regular fixture o Facebook and Twitter....I have yet to use the new Facebook Live feature and the stuff that my friends put on Facebook live is mostly mundane...Live streaming driving somewhere, sitting around the table eating, out at the mall...et al..Stuff that is boring when being written about, let alone watching somebody do that!

This guy obviously wanted attention and he got it...He live streamed an actual murder...He took narcisscism up a notch...People have live streamed fights and I'm certain, sexual intercourse isn't far behind, if that hasn't bee done already...

Yesterday, nobody outside of Cleveland and the majority of people IN CLEVELAND, didn't know who Steve "Stevie Steve" Stephens was...Today he is known Nationwide...The subject of a Nationwide manhunt...

Now he has his 15 minutes of fame...Now he's known...Now he's somebody....

What is really sickening is the people sharing his video and veiwing it on Facebook...What does that say about us as a society?/ We are giving him what he wants...

Stevie Steve doesn't deserve to be heralded..He didn't do a good thing...What he did was horrific and evil and I don't care WHY he did it...He deserves the same punishment he gave his victim..to meet a violent end ,streamed live on Social Media..

I know, that's a bit extreme....It just angers me when I think of all these attention seekers out here who film themselves doing horrific things, who film people fighting, but don't bother to break up the fight..Who even stand by , while one of their friends punches somebody...usually an old person or a young person by themselves...all for "Likes" on Facebook or Facebook fame!

It disgusts me...

It is said that in the last days...Men will become lovers of themselves...

Those days are here, now!